When my editor assigned me to write about the new Buffalo Wild Wings-sponsored song “Let’s Go Buffalo Wild (A Pick 6 Love Song)” by T-Pain in collaboration with Hank the Buffalo as voiced by former Saturday Night Live cast member Beck Bennett, I knew it was important for me to handle it with the same care I always employ in analyzing chicken-related entertainment. What that means, in practice, is I listened to it over and over again while packing boxes for work. After the eight and a halfth time, I decided I preferred the grind of the air conditioner over the song’s intentionally painful bridge, and I stopped with a vengeance.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the facts:

• “Let’s Go Buffalo Wild (A Pick 6 Love Song)” is the first and surely only single off of the six-track album Table for Two (The Pick 6 Love Song Album), which otherwise includes solo tracks by Hank the Buffalo as voiced by former Saturday Night Live cast member Beck Bennett.
  • The album is categorized under Apple Music as “Hip-Hop/Rap,” even though the remaining song previews seem to indicate that they are meant to emulate other genres: country, R&B, something so bland I don’t know how to describe it other than “sewing vlog background music.” And not the good kind.
• The Pick 6 Meal for Two Deal is a Buffalo Wild Wings value bundle offering two entrées, two sides, and two drinks for what I assume is a relatively good price. The main site’s online menu is somewhat opaque about what constitutes an entrée.
  • I’m unclear on whether mozzarella sticks count as an entrée. I do want mozzarella sticks at this time and at most times.
    • They’re probably a side.
      • I want more than that, though.

This is the video:

Already, “Let’s Go Buffalo Wild (A Pick 6 Love Song)” is clearly the center of this project. The album’s other tracks are fillers at best, with little creative value, much like mozzarella sticks, except for the fact that I do want mozzarella sticks at this time. The stories their titles tell are peripheral: “Rinse Me With Ranch,” “Picking Six With the Boys.” At the heart of the Pick 6 Meal is clearly a normative two-person romantic relationship, and “Let’s Go Buffalo Wild (A Pick 6 Love Song)” emphasizes this throughout lyrics and the video, which features a formally dressed man and woman on a date under a fancy chandelier hanging in a garage that is for some reason a stand-in for Buffalo Wild Wings. There’s clear car culture at hand here. It is outside of the scope of this post.

I want to make one thing abundantly clear: this is a good production, mostly. T-Pain offers us a smooth foundational sample, carefully placed beats, and vocals tweaked just slightly but always delivered with clarity and finesse. I’ve never been to Buffalo Wild Wings before, but I would if this were the vibe.

With only one minute of the song to go, in comes the bridge, delivered by Hank the Buffalo as voiced by former Saturday Night Live cast member Beck Bennett. Intentionally off-key, clownish in his vibrato-laced delivery, and saying things like “Get nay-sty / So tasty / Me hungie, watch me stuff my face,” he is Buffalo Wild Wings’ creative team’s desperate attempt to prove they don’t take themselves too seriously, and it is excruciating. As he lists sauces with occasional sprinkles of AAVE syntax, Hank the Buffalo (a.v.b.f.S.N.L.c.m.B.B.) wears out his welcome very quickly. Is he endangered?

• I will eat him with a side of mozzarella sticks.

T-Pain has been vocal about the struggle of continuing to produce after the public disparaging of his use of Auto-Tune, noting in the Netflix documentary This is Pop that Usher once personally accused him of ruining music and in doing so started him on a path to acute depression. It’s not that he doesn’t have a good sense of humor about it, either, as his reaction to the 2009 Olde English Comedy video “Akon Calls T-Pain” demonstrates:

T-Pain is a skilled music producer who already knows how not to take himself overly seriously. He’s surely aware of the fact that doing a commercial for Buffalo Wild Wings is an inherently slightly ridiculous thing to do with all that talent. This is not something that needs clumsy underscoring by way of the presence of H.t.B.a.v.b.f.S.N.L.c.m.B.B.

As a music journalist and scholar, I hereby demand the release of a version of “Let’s Go Buffalo Wild (A Pick 6 Love Song)” with the buffalo removed. Thank you and God bless.

• A coupon for some mozzarella sticks would not go amiss, either.

References

“Buffalo Wild Wings and T-Pain Drop a Love Song to Level Up Your Next Date Night.” 2026. https://stories.inspirebrands.com/buffalo-wild-wings-and-t-pain-drop-a-love-song-to-level-up-your-next-date-night/. 
June, Sophia. 2021. “T-Pain Reveals He Was Depressed for Years After Insult from Usher.” June 22, Nylon. https://www.nylon.com/life/t-pain-depression-usher-ruined-music-auto-tune. 
Olde English Comedy. 2009. “Akon Calls T-Pain.” January 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wcU4ysY7-Y. 

About the Author’s Biases
Adriane was interviewed as an expert for a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the game I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator. She wrote this entire piece while she was supposed to be reviewing her dissertation supervisor’s comments on her final chapters. She really would like some mozzarella sticks.